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According to Jacinda Ardern, despite a massive increase in armed robberies and gun violence, shopkeepers shouldn’t arm themselves.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said arming business owners is not the answer to the recent spate of crimes the small island nation is currently experiencing, including ram raids by youth offenders, gang violence and shootings and stabbings.
Dairy and Business Association chair Sunny Kaushal said the government needed to acknowledge how serious the situation had become.
“A sense of lawlessness is now gripping all of New Zealand, and the soft on crime approach is not working”, he told Newshub.
[…] Kaushal said many small businesses were hiring their own security, with many going to him for advice on how to get a gun.
[…] Ardern responded to his comments, saying that she understood the concern existed but that arming business was “not the answer”.
[…] National Party’s police spokesman Mark Mitchell said he believes that the police pursuit policy change in 2020, where pursuing fleeing vehicles is only justified when the threat of the person fleeing “outweighs the risk of harm created by the pursuit”, was one of the issues behind the rising crime rates.
“The police need to urgently review their pursuit policy – since the change in policy, 83 per cent of fleeing drivers are not getting arrested. Young offenders have realised they can steal a car or flee the scene of a crime without the risk of being pursued or stopped by the police”, he said in May.
The little hoodlums actually skite about it.
[…] “I know police are working diligently to combat criminal activities so our communities are safe and feel safe, and have recently made a number of arrests and charges and seized a number of firearms.”
Despite the record investment, New Zealand is currently experiencing a wave of crime that has led to increasingly louder calls for action.
[…] The result of the rising [gang] tensions has been a string of drive-by neighbourhood shootings, with the most recent one at a home in Clover Park on Monday night that left the front window filled with multiple bullet holes. No one was injured, and no arrests have been made.
[…] Many homes have been left in similar conditions, with police arriving at multiple shootings and suspicious fires throughout May. On one night, there were seven shootings.
[…] National Party leader Christopher Luxon said the community was seeing an intensity and aggression in gang violence that had never been seen before.
[…] Luxon said he wanted to see firearm prohibition orders that have warrantless search powers so police could crackdown on illegal guns and a dedicated gang unit.
Ah, Chris, the reason we generally don’t allow warrantless searches is so that the cops can’t go around busting down doors because they happen to ‘think’ there might be something illegal. And you can bet it’d be the legal gun owners who will bear the brunt.
So there you have it. According to Ardern, shopkeepers shouldn’t arm themselves because, you know, a local Mongrel Mob prospect might get shot by the local dairy owner.
Apart from mindlessly repeating “escalating gang tension”, the media won’t even speculate about reasons for the increase in gun violence. Of course I can’t prove causation, but I do know that gun violence began increasing dramatically after the Ardern Government’s changes to gun laws. It also needs to be asked where have all the guns come from? Fell from the sky with sprinklings of fairy dust?
The law regarding self defence is pretty clear. You can use lethal force if you believe that your life is in danger. So shooting an armed intruder who is pointing a gun at your face isn’t an issue (the only issue is whether you’re allowed to have a gun in the first place and, if not, make sure to keep it well hidden in case Luxon gets his way with warrantless searches).
Not every dairy or superette or liquor shop needs to be armed. Just enough of them so that criminals think that robbing a shop for a few packets of ciggies isn’t worth the risk.
But we can’t have that now, can we?
